advertising

Following the arrival of stronger-than-expected earnings last week, radio service Pandora this morning announced the expansion of its “Sponsored Listening” ad product, which is now being made available to all advertisers. The product, which was first introduced this past fall, was said previously to be scheduled for a launch in the second half of 2015. Instead of more… Read More

A Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based startup called Okanjo, which offers publishers an alternative to native advertising with what it calls “native commerce,” has raised $1.7 million in new funding in a follow-on round from local angel investors, bringing the company’s total raise to date to $3.2 million. The additional funding will be used in part to launch Okanjo’s product… Read More

Facebook has a new update to its privacy policies, as well as its terms and conditions for users. This time around, it’s continuing its trend of trying to lessen the impact of these changes by introducing a new Privacy Basics feature that essentially acts as an introductory tutorial to the privacy controls it puts in the hands of users on the site.
Privacy Basics includes a FAQ about… Read More

Tumblr’s auto-playing video ads will begin rolling out to users’ dashboards today, in a pilot program that includes participation from ten big-name brands such as CW, Lexus, Universal, JCPenney, and Hulu, and others. The video ad test follows last week’s news of an updated video player offering auto-play capabilities, and looping, “Vine-like” videos. The new brand… Read More

Boostable doesn’t have to sell its ads. Marketplaces sell them for it. Ticket, crowdfunding, and ecommerce marketplaces make money when their users sell things, so they’re incentivized to route traffic to the listings they host, which is exactly what Boostable’s easy-peasy ad-buying tool does for marketplace sellers do. So the marketplaces do the legwork of recommending… Read More

Unlike startups Zoom, Pow, Zing, and Schwongooza, Turkish startup Zap is trying to disrupt the on-taxi advertising market. By placing bright LED signs on the top of standard cabs, the company aims to turn dead space into a lucrative advertising spot for drivers and fleets.
Founded by Yigit Kipman, Ahmet Bati and Emrecan Bati, the company has received a $100,000 grant to expand through Europe… Read More

FreeCharge, an India-based online platform that lets user earn coupons when they add money to their prepaid mobile phone plans or pay utility bills online, has raised a $33 million Series B from returning investor Sequoia Capital, as well as Sofina, and RuNet. Read More

Amazon has launched a display ad network, in the form of Amazon CPM ads, to members of its online affiliates program, Amazon Associates. Select members of the program have recently been invited to test the new advertising option, which will feature both display ads from Amazon as well as other “high-quality” advertisers.
The program is currently in a pilot testing period –… Read More

After curating a sizable list of clients such as NBC, CBS and HBO, interactive commerce provider Delivery Agent is moving away from television and has settled its eyes on the music industry. Today, the company acquired Musictoday from Live Nation Entertainment. Read More

Latest Crunch Report

Appier, an advertising technology startup, has raised a $6 million Series A from Sequoia Capital. The company, which is based in Taipei and has offices in Singapore and San Francisco, develops tech used for cross-screen targeted marketing across a wide range of devices, ranging from wearable tech to smartphones and tablet. Appier has previously raised seed funding of $1 million and its… Read More

Update: Google provided the following statement to TechCrunch, clarifying the SEC document described below –
“We are in contact with the SEC to clarify the language in this 2013 filing, which does not reflect Google’s product roadmap. Nest, which we acquired after this filing was made, does not have an ads-based model and has never had any such plans.”
When Google… Read More

Pitching an advertising platform targeting mobile application developers has netted the startup company Appwiz $1.4 million in new financing.
The company was founded in the summer of 2012 as a software development kit for Android developers, according to chief executive officer Yariv Ron. But as Ron and his team were developing their technology, they realized that there was a monetization… Read More

Google gives publishers the ability to run display and text ads on their sites. They can run both styles of ads, or just pick a single one. The same goes for advertisers, who also have to choose between one of these two formats for their ads. Today, however, the company is launching a new ad unit that brings standard text ads to sites that would normally just run display… Read More

Despite what you may have read, Mozilla isn’t canning its plans to sell sponsored tiles on its new-tab page.
A few days ago, Mozilla’s Vice President of Firefox Jonathan Nightingale wrote a brief blog post defending the organization’s plans to include sponsored tiles on Firefox’s new-tab page. For some reason, a couple of people interpreted Nightingale’s comments… Read More

AdYapper, a startup allows marketers to see how often their online ads are viewed, has raised $1 million in new funding from angel investors, including movie producer Jack Giarraputo. In addition, the TechStars alum also gained accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC) for real-time measurements of viewable display ad impressions. Read More

Apple has just updated a section in iTunes Connect, the service mobile developers use to distribute and update their applications on the iTunes App Store, with new language that details how the Advertising Identifier (IDFA) can and cannot be used, and asks for developers’ compliance with these rules by checking a box.
Though Apple began rejecting some applications in February which… Read More

Global ad spend is on track to grow 5.5% this year to $537 billion, while Internet advertising will account for nearly one-quarter of that, at $121 billion, according to the latest forecasts out from ZenithOptimedia, a division of ad giant Publicis. Overall it’s a generally optimistic picture: the researchers say that this is the third revision of its 2014 figures that it has made… Read More

The story of advertising online in the last year has significantly also been a story about the rise of ad tech — ways of serving users more relevant ads, and ways of monitoring how users have responded to them. Unsurprisingly, this has also translated into a big rise in tracking technology: Adblock Plus, the popular German-based open source project that creates browser extensions and… Read More

Google is launching a new feature for advertisers today that highlights data Google gathered from its Consumer Surveys in their ads. These so-called “consumer ratings annotations” can appear under Google’s regular text ads and will roll out over the next few days. Read More

Berlin-based startup TVSmiles, which has built a second-screen app-based loyalty program to encourage people to watch TV ads, has closed a $7 million Series A funding round, from prior investors Ventech. Read More